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Cost effective polymer optical couplers based on multimode interference techniques

M. H. IBRAHIM1,* , N. M. KASSIM1, A. B. MOHAMMAD1

Affiliation

  1. Photonics Technology Centre, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310, Johor, Malaysia

Abstract

Weakly guiding Multimode Interference (MMI) optical splitters and cross couplers based on photodefinable BenzoCyclobutene (BCB 4024-40) polymer are presented for the first time. The devices are designed based on three interference mechanisms of MMI and fabricated on BK7 glass substrate with a thin layer of SiO2 as cover. A cost effective chemical etching technique is used in the fabrication process to take advantage of the photosensitive nature of the polymer. The waveguide loss is measured using the cut-back method to be 3.5 dB/cm. The fabricated symmetric power splitters are found to exhibit 0.15-0.51 dB splitting uniformity with maximum recorded insertion loss of 1.13 dB. Meanwhile, the 2×2 cross couplers are testified to demonstrate a maximum crosstalk of -17.81 dB and maximum loss of 3.37 dB..

Keywords

BenzoCyclobutene polymer, Multimode interference, Optical coupler, Chemical etching technique, Polymer optical waveguide.

Submitted at: May 30, 2007
Accepted at: July 15, 2007

Citation

M. H. IBRAHIM, N. M. KASSIM, A. B. MOHAMMAD, Cost effective polymer optical couplers based on multimode interference techniques, Journal of Optoelectronics and Advanced Materials Vol. 9, Iss. 7, pp. 2133-2137 (2007)